by Dana Langer
“Oh, really? Well, how . . . how is he doing?”
“He was in the hospital this morning, but he’s okay.”
“Did they say what happened? I mean, what caused the accident?”
“The storm, I guess. The boat’s completely destroyed.”
“And he didn’t say anything about . . . well, about anything?”
“What are you talking about? What was he supposed to say?”
I shake my head. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m glad he’s all right.”
Jason shrugs. “Me too, I guess.”
A song on the radio ends, and the DJ comes back on. “Folks, this is DJ Burroughs and you’re listening to WCOD, the Cod. That was Bob Dylan off his 1965 classic Highway 61 Revisited, and now we’re going to play some new music for you. This is Oren Salt and the Walking Shades playing their new single, ‘On the Ghost Road.’ ”
“I like your dad’s new song.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you going to the dance?”
“Probably not.”
“You should.” Jason walks over to the closet and starts sorting his dress shirts by color. “I mean, it would be good for you to make some friends.”
“I guess.” I point to an old orange T-shirt that’s hanging in the back of the closet. “You still have that?”
“What?”
“Your Little League shirt?”
“Yup.” He smiles and takes it off the hanger. “The Starbridge Starfish. You want it? It’s too small on me now.”
“Okay.”
He tosses me the shirt, and I hold it close to my face.
“Are you sure?” I say. “I mean, you don’t want to keep it?”
“I’m sure. I was, like, the worst one on the team. Don’t you remember? I used to chase butterflies in the outfield.”
“You were cute.”
He rolls his eyes. “Great. Well, that’s not the look I’m going for anymore.”
Downstairs, a door opens and slams.
“Jason!” Alice calls from the kitchen. “Dinner in five minutes!”
“You can stay,” he tells me. “I mean, if you want to.”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’ll stay.”
Dinner at Jason’s house has become an interesting event. What used to consist of him and his mom, and microwave dinners on collapsible TV trays, has become a formal affair complete with moose antler chandeliers, giant hunks of meat piled high on silver platters, and settings with lace place mats and three forks. Jason’s mom calls it “Viking chic,” which I think makes about as much sense as Emma’s mermaid gymnast.
Back when he and Alice first started dating, Mr. Bergstrom once had my entire family over for dinner, and he took us on a tour of the house, stopping to point out all the animals he’d personally killed and then hung up on the wall like paintings. “That deer weighed well over two hundred pounds when I got him,” he told us. “A real monster. I hunted him for days.”
“Hunted?” Mom had laughed at him. “But this isn’t hunting. Any fool can shoot a deer.”
Now everyone has assigned seats: Mr. Bergstrom goes at the head of the table with Jason’s mom right next to him, and Jason and I go next to her. Jason’s stepbrothers sit across from us. The chairs are like thrones, taller than I am, and somehow it always takes me twice as long as everyone else to pull mine out and sit down.
Tonight, Mr. Bergstrom watches me the whole time, shaking his head. “You again?”
Aside from his bruised face, he seems very much like his normal self.
Alice starts serving everyone while the stepbrothers try to catch food in their mouths and poke each other with salad forks. I know they all have names, but I can never remember which name goes with which brother.
“Don’t you have your own family to eat dinner with, young lady?”
“I invited her,” Jason says.
“Is that a thing we do in this family, Jason? Invite people to dinner in my house without checking with me first?”
Alice holds up one hand like she’s trying to stop oncoming traffic. “There’s plenty of food! Who wants soup?”
She grabs a ladle, and Mr. Bergstrom pats her as she leans over to serve him.
“Is this a gorgeous woman or what?”
Alice clears her throat. “How are you feeling, honey? Your eye looks pretty banged up.”
“Oh, much better. Good as new.”
“Well, take it easy for a few days, like the doctors said.”
“We’ll see.” He winks and gives her another pat.
Alice smiles. “Why don’t you carve the bird?”
“Good idea.” Mr. Bergstrom stands up and plunges a fork and carving knife into the chicken. Then he pauses and clears his throat. “Listen up, everyone! While I have you all here, I have some important news. Someone is going to be the master of ceremonies at this year’s Salt and Stars Folk Festival.” He waggles his eyebrows and takes a long, dramatic drink from his goblet to draw out the suspense. “And that someone is me!”
“Oh, honey!” Jason’s mom starts clapping. “That’s fantastic.”
“What does that mean?” one of Jason’s stepbrothers asks.
“Yeah,” another pipes up. “That sounds super embarrassing.”
“It means I get a place of honor on the lead float,” he explains. “And I make the big welcome speech. And I’ll finally have a chance to break out that little beauty.” He points to a locked display case across the room where he keeps his supposedly authentic Viking heirlooms, including warrior helmets and his prized crown. The crown is made of beaten metal, a sort of old, dirty-looking gold color, and you can see all these big round spaces where, back in the twelfth century, it supposedly was encrusted with jewels. Mr. Bergstrom claims it’s been handed down in his family for generations, but Jason has a theory that he actually got it at the Viking theme restaurant in Bangor.
“Dad!” one of the stepbrothers exclaims. “You’re not actually gonna wear that out in public, are you?”
“You’re darn right I am! I’m going to wear it all the way through the parade and into the auditorium for my speech. And I’ll tell you something else: I’ve got the set guy from the community theater working on building me a knarr.”
“A what?”
“A knarr. An authentic dragon ship, just like the one that brought our great ancestor, Erik the Red, to New England in the first place.”
“This festival is so lame.” Another stepbrother reaches across the table and grabs a roll from the bread basket. “Traffic was stopped for ten minutes on Seawall Avenue today, just so Mr. Hale could carry a giant papier-mâché fish across the street.”
“People take their floats very seriously, son.” Mr. Bergstrom starts carving and distributing the chicken. “It’s a time-honored tradition. Besides, summer only lasts for a short time around here. We need to give it a proper good-bye. Now, when the time comes to do so, I for one intend to be riding a knarr.” He stabs some meat with the serving fork and points it at me. “What about you, young lady? What’s your role?”
“My role?”
“In the festival. What’s your role in the festival?”
I look down at my plate. “I’m a snail.”
“A what?”
“A snail.”
“Oh.” Mr. Bergstrom barely conceals his disgust as he sits down to his plate. “That sounds unattractive. What is it with these ridiculous costumes this year? My own son’s a darn pinecone.”
“Stepson,” Jason murmurs.
Mr. Bergstrom says, “Ali, babe, can you pass the salt?”
“Sure, hon.”
Jason’s mom passes the salt.
Jason takes a sip of milk and doesn’t make eye contact with anyone.
“It’s that Coach Bouchard, isn’t it? I don’t see what teaching a bunch of kids to play lacrosse has to do with the kind of know-how it takes to pull together a really top-notch festival. He’s from Canada, right? Some sort of French Canadian or something?”
The third stepbrother groans. “Why do you care so much?”
“Because this is our heritage, son. We’re Bergstroms. We’re Vikings! And we’re proud of it. In fact, Jason, that’s what drew me to your mother in the first place, back when she was waiting on me at the diner.”
“What did?”
“Her red hair, of course. I could tell she was of good, hearty Viking stock. Just like us.”
“We’re not Vikings and neither are you.”
“I’m talking about our bloodline, son! There is pure Viking running through these veins. Why, every now and then I still get the urge to . . . pillage.”
Jason looks down at his plate, where he’s taken care to ensure that none of his separate food groups are touching. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“That delicate stomach of yours. Well, it’s time to toughen up.” Mr. Bergstrom pulls the ladle from a bowl of gravy and pours gravy all over Jason’s plate. “You know, someday you four boys will inherit my whole company. Viking Industries. The condos, the marina, everything! What do you say?”
Jason shoves the plate away. “I don’t want to work for you.”
“Then what exactly do you plan to do with your life?”
“I’m going to be a lobsterman, like my real father.”
Mr. Bergstrom starts laughing so hard he nearly chokes. “A lobsterman? You can barely set foot on a boat! They’ll have no patience for you, Jason.” He takes a drink from his goblet. “You think they’re going to let you wash your hands fifty times a day out at sea?”
I take a sip of my water. “Our history teacher, Ms. Cross, says it’s a source of debate, you know, whether there were ever actually Vikings in the Maine territories. It’s not actually been proven.”
“And what about you?” Mr. Bergstrom points at me again, this time with the sharp end of his knife. “What’s your background? Kind of hard to tell, if you ask me.”
Jason sighs. “We didn’t ask you.”
“Um, my mother was Native American, a member of the Penobscot Nation. My dad’s Jewish.”
“Oh.” Mr. Bergstrom looks even more disgusted than when he found out I was a snail. “No pure bloodlines there.”
“No.” I resist the urge to apologize for my role at their dinner table.
“Native American, eh?”
“Yes. She was born on the reservation near Old Town.”
“And your father’s family?”
“They came here a long time ago from Romania.”
“Peasants? That sort of thing?”
“I guess so. They used to run a store, like a supermarket, where the diner is now.”
“I see. Well, that explains your look.”
I nod, even though I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Yeah.”
“Her sister is Lula Salt,” one of the stepbrothers says. “You know her. She’s in my class.”
“Oh!” His eyebrows go up again.
“Actually, I have three sisters,” I tell them.
“Well, you don’t look much like your sisters, do you?”
“I guess not.” I keep my eyes on my plate. I feel like the picked-over chicken carcass.
“Four sisters,” he continues. “That’s . . . unusual.”
“Honey.” Jason’s mom lays her hand on his arm. “Why don’t we let Lolly finish her dinner.”
“Oh, sure.” He grins at her with a mouth full of poultry. “This is great, by the way. A meal fit for a Viking king.”
She smiles at him. “I’m so glad you’re enjoying it.”
Later, while Mr. Bergstrom is having his after-dinner drink and Jason’s mom is cleaning up the dishes, we overhear them talking. “You should be a little kinder to her, honey,” Alice is saying. “She’s had such a terrible time since Suzy’s accident last winter. They all have. And Oren’s no help. You know how he is.”
Jason and I creep closer to see into the kitchen. I have my hands full with his Little League T-shirt and a container of leftovers Alice packed for me to take home, even though I told her we have plenty of food at our house.
“Of course I do. We used to be on the planning committee together. He’s some kind of socialist weirdo.” Mr. Bergstrom swirls his drink, and the ice cubes clink against the glass. “Of course, I don’t know him as well as you do. You’re the one who went out with him.”
“Oh, goodness. That was thirty years ago. We were in high school.” She drops an armload of dishes into the sink and turns on the faucet.
“Well, from what I hear, what happened to Suzanna wasn’t exactly an accident. I never liked that woman, truth be told. She never fit in around here.”
“She was troubled,” Alice says. “She’d call it exhaustion, but sometimes she’d have to go into the hospital for weeks at a time. Between that and all the touring she and Oren did, the girls barely saw her. There were a few years where I practically raised them myself, and Suzy told me she thought it was better that way. She doubted her ability to be a good mother. Singing, she’d always say, was what she knew she was good at.”
“Well, I guess it all makes sense now. Those people. Lots of mental health issues.”
Their words turn like corkscrews in my stomach, and I wish Jason wasn’t standing right there next to me, hearing it too.
“Didn’t you say he met her at a bus stop or something? She was some sort of homeless person, right?”
“He saw her singing on a street corner in Portland and fell madly in love. She was barely eighteen years old, but that was that. Say what you will, she certainly was . . . talented.”
Mr. Bergstrom sets his empty glass down on the counter. “Well, that only gets a person so far, Alice. You need to be strong, too. That’s what I keep trying to explain to your son. There’s no room for weakness in a town like this.”
“Still.” She opens the dishwasher. “I worry about the girls. Jason tells me Oren’s hardly ever home, and they’re so vulnerable up there in that house by themselves. Nobody knows if they’re coming or going.”
“Is that right?” He pours himself another drink. “Do they sing too?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean like their mother. Do they also have a talent for singing?”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the older girls. Why? Thinking about a part for them in the festival?”
“Maybe,” he says. “We’ll see.”
“I’m sorry,” Jason whispers.
My hands are shaking. Outside, the wind picks up and a bare branch scratches at the window. I start struggling into my jacket. “I should go home.”
“Let me walk you at least.”
Jason grabs a lantern from the hall closet, and we set off into the darkness of Ocean View Drive. In the off-season, the whole town shuts down after sunset, and we can’t hear anything now except the occasional car going past and the waves breaking on the shore. When we were little, we always used to hold hands in the dark. But that’s obviously not going to happen now. I walk on the sidewalk with my hands clutching my stuff, and Jason shuffles his sneakers along in the street, kicking at fallen leaves and swinging the lantern.
Last summer, at Jason’s mom’s wedding to Mr. Bergstrom, something weird happened. The wedding reception was over, and we had just waved good-bye to Alice and Mr. Bergstrom as they drove off for their honeymoon in Montreal. Everyone was yelling and cheering, and we all had these little sparklers to wave around in the darkness. Then it was time to leave, and Jason and I walked down to the dock while we waited for my parents and sisters to get their coats. There was a full moon and the air was warm, but there was a breeze blowing off the water. I was wearing one of Lily’s old dresses, and the straps kept falling off my shoulders. I remember turning to Jason and saying, “It’s kind of cold out.” And then, suddenly, he leaned over, and he kissed me. Just like that. It landed right on the corner of my mouth. And then everybody else came outside too, and it was time to leave, and Jason and I never talked about what happened.
I don’t know why I’m thinking about that now, though, as we cut across Mr. Hale’s backyard and start walking up the part of Sea View Drive where the road is mostly dirt and gravel. I glance at Jason. “Did you like the chicken?”
He makes his totally disgusted face, a face reserved for things that really gross him out, like messy closets, and mayonnaise, and Mr. Bergstrom. “Are you kidding?”
I smile at the ground. Mr. Bergstrom’s words are still echoing in my mind, and I want to be someplace warm and bright and safe. I want to see my dad and my sisters. “Let’s stop at the diner. I’ll make you an egg and cheese.”
The diner stays open until midnight, but there aren’t many people there on off-season weeknights this late, just my sisters. We can see them now through the window in front. They’re all huddled together in the same booth, laughing and talking, and eating food off each other’s plates. I don’t think they would like Jason being here so late, because the Sea Witch might call, so he and I sneak around the back and in through the kitchen entrance.
“Hey, kids.” Dad is scraping the grill with a spatula. There’s a country song playing on the radio, and he doesn’t ask me any of the normal dad questions like where I’ve been or if I know what time it is. I’m not sure he would know the answer to that last question himself.
“Can we make some egg and cheese sandwiches?”
“Pass me the eggs,” he says. “I’ll make them for you.”
I’m already yanking open the heavy refrigerator door. “Thanks.”
Dad fries the eggs with chopped onions and garlic and the grease from whatever else happened to be on the grill recently. He slides some extra butter onto the grill, and then he bangs the side of the spatula against it and scoops the onions into a pile. Then he slips a slice of cheddar cheese on each of the eggs. Everything is hissing and sizzling and melting, and it all smells so delicious. “So what have you guys been up to?”
“Just hanging out,” Jason says.
My dad gives him a look. “That right?”
“Are you going to be at the festival, Mr. Salt?”
“Me? Of course! Suzy and I helped found that festival. Of course, back then it was all about the music. Now it’s all political.”
